Christian Camargo plays the air sprite Ariel in the Bridge Project production of Shakespeare’s play. Sam Mendes directs the show, which opened on Thursday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

As you take your seat at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, where the Bridge Project production of “The Tempest” opened Thursday night, you can spy Stephen Dillane, the lanky British actor who plays Prospero, sitting quietly among the musicians already assembled on the stage.

With spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, his hair a spiky, unkempt tangle, he thumbs through a sheaf of yellow pages on a stand before him, immersed in study. When Prospero rises to signal the start of the show, putting on his magic cloak and a belt of fraying feathers, it is with a palpable sense of resignation — a book-bound professor called reluctantly away from his task.

Mr. Dillane’s cerebral Prospero seems decidedly at home in that fat, messy volume. When he is not presiding over a neatly designed drama of retribution and redemption, or orchestrating the betrothal of his beloved daughter, Prospero happily reverts to his studies, putting back on the glasses, picking up a pen to mark a favorite passage, disappearing into the world on the page as a refuge from the responsibilities of the island universe he rules.

There is no such thing as a definitive Shakespeare interpretation, but the role of Prospero is often played by actors of a natural grandiloquence, bringing a plummy vocalism and an imposing authority — and sometimes imposing celebrity — to bear on this role, the exiled Duke of Milan with benevolent magic at his disposal.

Mr. Dillane’s approach, scaled to suit this starkly designed, concentrated production directed by Sam Mendes, is more astringent and less rhetorically lush. (One benefit of concentration: the play is performed in about two and a quarter hours, without an intermission.) Prowling coolly around the small sand-filled circle in which most of the action is staged, calling softly for the assistance of Ariel (Christian Camargo), his helpmate from the spirit world, Mr. Dillane’s Prospero is a deeply loving father, a compassionate if stern taskmaster, a wry observer of the frailties and follies of the human flotsam brought to his shores.

But a natural ruler, exulting in his power and thirsting for vengeance, he really is not. An ambivalence about the prerogatives of Prospero’s authority seeps into almost every moment of Mr. Dillane’s performance. And sometimes you are inclined to wonder whether the ambivalence reflects the character’s divided thoughts about his destiny or the actor’s discomfort with some aspects of the role.

When he stands outside the proceedings, watching the unfolding of his designs with quiet satisfaction, Mr. Dillane infuses his Prospero with an appealingly skeptical humor. (A similar tone characterizes his outstanding performance as Jaques in “As You Like It,” now being staged in repertory with “The Tempest.”) As his daughter, Miranda (played with vivid emotionalism by Juliet Rylance), and the shipwrecked prince, Ferdinand (a forthright Edward Bennett), tumble into an instant, rapturous love, Mr. Dillane’s casual asides to the audience (“It works”) are deadpan and funny. As Miranda stands amazed at the emergence of a whole tribe of these exotic humans at the play’s climax — “O brave new world, that has such people in ’t!” — Prospero’s retort, “ ’Tis new to thee,” is delivered with a dry understatement that brings down the house.

Photo

Edward Bennett, left, as Ferdinand, Stephen Dillane as Prospero and Juliet Rylance as Miranda in “The Tempest.”Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

But understatement does not always suit a man who has, after all, whipped up a harrowing storm to bring under his power the men who usurped his dukedom and sent him into exile a dozen years before. During the passages in which Prospero must wield his authority with an imperious will or deliver an Important Speech, a hollow note often creeps into Mr. Dillane’s performance. He pumps up the volume in these signature moments, summoning rounded chesty tones, but the effort is palpable, and a certain arm-waving staginess impinges on what is otherwise a measured and intelligent performance.

Mr. Mendes’s production makes no radical statements, although Mr. Camargo’s gothic androgyne, Ariel, is an appealing innovation. With a nightclub pallor, dressed alternately in a sleek, black Jil Sander-ish suit, a slinky evening gown or a winged contraption that recalls the ’90s superhero movie “The Crow,” this Ariel is a more somber sentinel than the familiar, flitting sprite. It’s a fresh, unexpected approach, and Mr. Camargo speaks the verse with a cool beauty. Despite a moment of early violent conflict (one of the bits that doesn’t quite ring true), Ariel’s rapport with Mr. Dillane’s Prospero is intimate, touching and real.

Caliban is played by Ron Cephas Jones, one of two black members of the Bridge Project ensemble, which seems a nod toward the colonialist interpretations of the play that have posed questions about Prospero’s moral integrity. But Mr. Jones’s performance emphasizes Caliban’s poisoned depravity rather than hinting at any innate nobility corrupted by his enslavement. (He makes his entrance oozing up from beneath the sand, like some sinister serpent. “Ew, Gollum,” my companion whispered later, noting the fingernails.) The comic scenes, in which Caliban is soused on sack and elects to make a god of the sodden butler Stephano (Thomas Sadoski), are dominated by the wonderfully buffoonish Trinculo of Anthony O’Donnell, his pink face curdled with drunken astonishment when the invisible Ariel plays his tricks.

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Stephano and Trinculo’s shipwrecked betters are played with effective simplicity by Michael Thomas (excellent as Prospero’s invidious brother, Antonio), Richard Hansell (a flinty, sarcastic Sebastian) and Alvin Epstein (a gentle, avuncular Gonzalo). But Jonathan Lincoln Fried, playing Ferdinand’s father, Alonso, the King of Naples, is heavy on bluster. When they are not at the center of the action, in Prospero’s magic sand circle (an effective device from the set designer, Tom Piper), the characters retreat to chairs placed in a shallow pool at the back of the stage, where they sit frozen in place, like marionettes awaiting the energizing tug of the puppeteer’s hands.

In Mr. Dillane’s restrained interpretation, the puppeteer plies his trade with an air of aggrieved duty rather than fervid relish. Prospero’s climactic announcement that he will “retire me to my Milan, where every third thought shall be my grave” rings with a sense of poignant relief.

The robes of ducal ceremony, which he briefly dons to reassert his rightful authority, suit this diffident Prospero no more comfortably than his magic cloak. And the pensive beauty Mr. Dillane brings to his recitation of the epilogue suggests that this talented actor finds Prospero particularly sympathetic in these final moments, when he is not giving orders but gently suing the audience for release.

THE TEMPEST

By William Shakespeare; directed by Sam Mendes; sets by Tom Piper; costumes by Catherine Zuber; lighting by Paul Pyant; sound by Simon Baker for Autograph; music by Mark Bennett; hair and wig design by Tom Watson; fight director, Rick Sordelet; music coordinator, Curtis Moore; musical direction by Stephen Bentley-Klein; choreography by Josh Prince; international tour producer, Claire Béjanin. Part of the Bridge Project, produced by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Old Vic and Neal Street Productions; presented by Bank of America. At the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene; (718) 636-4100. Playing in repertory with “As You Like It” through March 13. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

A version of this review appears in print on February 26, 2010, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Air Sprite, Feral Creature, Rapturous Love And Other Sorcery. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe